[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”
That’s what the industry wants to believe. Except that US regulators have shown a willingness to sign off on new nuclear power plants as long as you do all the paperwork right and show that you’re not some moron who will dump a pile of plutonium in the desert and run water over it to make steam.
Nuclear takes 5 years to build according to initial plans. That’s a joke, and everyone knows it. It’s going to take 10 years, and the budget will double over initial estimate, as well. That means it will take 10 years before you see a dime back on your investment, and it could all be for nothing if the funding shortfall can’t be made up. Some of this is regulations–you know, the kind that keeps another Chernobyl from happening–but a lot of it has been the fact that every plant takes boutique engineering and specialized labor.
The Westinghouse AP1000 design (what they used in Vogtle) was supposed to fix that boutique engineering. It did not. SMRs are also supposed to fix that boutique engineering, but their projects are also failing.
Meanwhile, you could invest your money into a solar or wind farm. It’ll start generating power in 6-12 months and start putting money back in your pocket. Nothing about the construction is particularly boutique; it’s almost all mass produced stuff. You don’t need specialists to put them together, either. There is a track record of solar and wind farms meeting construction deadlines and budget forecasts. Given all that, who the hell would invest money into nuclear?
